With a fast development of communication networks, many new technologies, including massive dense networks, interference and mobility management, Internet of Things (IoT), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), pervasive and social computing, mobile ad hoc networks (MANET), cognitive radio, cloud computing and so on, are proposed to offer a big data bandwidth and infinite capability of networking for the next generation networks. For example, with the NFV technology, network functions will be highly virtualized, so that network hardware and software can be separated at most of devices (such as servers, switches, routers and base stations) over the whole networks, in order to enhance the flexibility of network function provision and update, as well as reduce the cost of network deployment. Such networks in which at least part of network functions are virtualized with the NFV technology, are referred to as virtualized networks.
However, integrating all above and innovating new techniques for communication networks would introduce extreme challenges on network security and trust for virtualized networks. A number of issues such as network security and trust architecture, trustworthy transmission collaboration, secure network service provision, seamless and secure integration of all available networking resources, etc. have not been seriously explored and studied.
Thus, it would be advancement in the art to provide an approach to realize security and trust managements for the next generation communication networks, especially virtualized networks.